Classes

[Laddy]

What's your favorite class system.

I'va always enjoyed games with established classes for all the characters, thus giving them significance.

Discuss.

[oddler]

Well, I like the Job System for classes because it gives you a sort of reward for working in a given job. It's realistic that you get better at certain things when you work at them over and over again. As in XI where using a certain magic more than another would give you bonuses in that area of magic.

I also liked XII in the way that you could seemingly work on whatever you wanted at the same time. But really, it's just sort of a gimped version of XI's abilities, I say.

[VeloZer0]

Going with FFT. The class you are is still uber important, but there is a whole lot of mix and matching of abilities between them. Having the ability to set a secondary skill set, counter ability, class ability, and move ability made set up very in depth. (In depth character party tweaking I something I really like in games)

FFIX was kind of nice in that each character was a set class, but you could tweak the abilities within the class quite a bit.

FF was kind of weak, but it was the start so I don't go hard on it.

FFIII was a great advancement, but still limited the utility of playing as more than a handful of classes across the entire game. Having different costumes was an excellent precedent to set.

FFV was fun, but it sucked that you could only have one ability from another class at a time. One active ability and one support ability at a time would have been better, imo. It was also kind of cool that you had the ultimate class at the end that all the others contributed to.

EDIT: Totally missed the point of the OP, I thought it was about classes and jobs only, not about algorithms for assigning abilities to characters.

I don't get so hung up on classes/jobs/free form. I am more interested in systems that let you spend time tweaking character skill setups.
FFVII was freeform but I spent lots of time tweaking my materia layouts. > FFVI static classes and spent no time in the menu other than equipping new items and healing.
FFIX was static classes, but I spent lots of time tweaking what abilities I had active > FFV was jobs, but I just changed a class, slapped in a ability and was off to the races.
FFT was jobs, but I spent half my time in the set up changing job/ability combinations > FFXII was freeform but once I learned the ability and maybe threw in a gambit for it I was done.

[Raistlin]

I voted job system because of FFT; none of the other games have done it as well.

[Jiro]

Established classes for me. It means I get some use out of the characters I don't necessarily think are cool. But I'm also a fan of "manual classes", but purely for VI. It's equipment system is my top favourite along with IX (which was the same, except it was the way to learn abilities too).